Michael Kennard used to think that the best we could do for the planet was to “be the least bad”. That was until he dived into the world of permaculture, regenerative growing and soil health. Now, he sees sustainability as a minimum requirement for any business. “We can actually make things better if we live well,” he says. Michael is on a mission to change the way people see waste and introduce them to a natural nutrient cycle whereby their food waste becomes compost, which helps them grow more food, which becomes more food waste. And so the cycle continues. “Waste is a human idea,” he says, “and it’s a terrible idea.”

His concept for a community composting scheme came about when Michael found that he was unable to produce enough compost for his market garden, in Lewes, East Sussex, on his own. After trying out all of the commercially available organic composts to make up the deficit, he was at a loss. Intuitively, he felt that the product he was buying wasn’t what he needed. He started learning about the soil food web and bought himself a microscope. “I found that although commercial compost is made of organic matter, it’s basically sterile – there’s nothing living in there. That’s the case across the board.”

He realised that to get the quality he was after, he would have to start making his own compost – although, as he points out, “I don’t actually make it. I just create the conditions that allow the micro-organisms to do their work.” Friends and neighbours were keen to donate their waste – the local council in Brighton & Hove doesn’t offer a food-waste collection service, so there were a lot of people who were eager to find a sustainable way of disposing of their waste. Before he knew it, Michael was being offered more food waste than he needed. Not wanting to turn it down, the idea for Compost Club was born.

Club members pay a monthly subscription to have their food waste collected every three weeks in Michael’s electric van. They can opt to have either one or three buckets of compost returned to them in the spring (£12 or £16 a month, respectively) or they can choose to donate their share to community growing projects, which works well for those without a garden or any houseplants. A little goes a long way too – two and-a-half litres is enough to treat six square metres of growing space.

Currently, Michael collects food waste from 180 homes. Excess compost is up for sale to members of the public and can be delivered with plastic-free shipping across the UK.

He also hopes to expand – his work energises him and has fostered a sense of what he calls “joyful service”. He’s particularly keen to spend more time running workshops to spread the Compost Club ethos of healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy people. “By empowering individuals and communities to make compost for themselves, I can have a bigger reach,” he says.

USEFUL INFORMATION
To find out more about Compost Club or to purchase its compost, visit compostclub.online, or follow on Instagram @compost.club

There are many incredible women who have, and are still dominating the world of gardening, so for International Women’s Day we’ve listed some of the key, female garden designers in British history that still influence the way we garden today, alongside some of the top women garden designers who are currently succeeding in the industry. Read our piece on the key dates of women in gardening. 

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19th century female gardeners

From the middle of the 19th century, it is largely women who have shaped the way we think about gardens.

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)

No garden designer has had more enduring influence on the British garden: for a century her painterly way of grouping plants in large, informal masses of colour; her insistence on harmony and rhythm; and her embrace of formal structure softened with loose, richly textured planting, has been the sine qua non of the successful British garden. Gardens were considered a series of carefully made pictures; and only really in the last decade has colour been supplanted as the guiding principle of design.

Margery Fish (1892-1969)

Our current fascination for perennials, and especially our continuing love-affair with the cottage garden, can be traced back to Margery Fish, whose approachable, funny and commonsensical books championed a more simple and informal planting style. She was an early fan of silver foliage, and introduced the concept of ground cover as a labour-saving device. Read more about her snowdrop collection at East Lambrook Manor. 

Brenda Colvin (1897-1981)

In 1947, Brenda published Land and Landscape – an influential work on landscape in the 20th century, reflecting her commitment to an ecological approach and to simple planting. While loving her own garden, Little Peacocks, Brenda famously rejected private garden design as too subject to the whims and fancies of owners, turning to more durable projects such as power stations, reservoirs and town planning.

Norah Lindsay (1866-1948)

A major influence in the interwar years, Norah developed a rich, romantic, ‘untidy’ style that encouraged serendipity and self-seeding, wonderfully realised at her garden at Sutton Courtenay. In the 1920s, penniless but well connected, she began a glittering career as a High Society garden designer. Today she is best known for her long collaboration with Lawrence Johnston at Hidcote.

Phyllis Reiss (1886-1961)

When Phyllis Reiss moved to Tintinhull in 1933, she set about creating a garden of rooms within the Hamstone walls: tranquil enclosures unified by repeated plantings of silver, bronze and burgundy foliage and rhythmic topiary. Her unfussy elegance and year-round planting was to influence designers from Lanning Roper to Sylvia Crowe, and not least her successor at Tintinhull, Penelope Hobhouse.

Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962)

Vita would have insisted it was her husband, Harold Nicolson, who was the designer at now iconic Sissinghurst Castle – certainly in terms of its ground plan of rooms. But her exuberant, multi-layered planting style and her colour-themed gardens, especially her celebrated White Garden, have probably spawned more imitators in more countries than any designer, before or since.

Sylvia Crowe (1901-1997)

Sylvia Crowe was the pre-eminent landscape architect in post-war Britain and the author of a host of standard texts on landscaping, design and forestry. Her Garden Design (1958) is cited by many designers as a seminal text. Sylvia worked on Harlow and Basildon new towns, created Rutland Water, merged hated power stations and commercial forestry into the landscape – but never entirely abandoned gardens.

Rosemary Verey (1918-2001)

Rosemary came to epitomise Country House style, at its zenith in the 1980s, which she marketed with particular success in USA – all yew hedges, knots, fulsome pastel borders, discreet classical statuary and immaculate maintenance. She had a gift for striking set pieces – her laburnum tunnel and above all her supremely photogenic potager, inspired by Villandry, were copied the world over.

Key women garden designers working in Britain and beyond today

Rosemary Alexander

Mother of four, Rosemary Alexander was given six months to prove herself when she began work in the 1970s as the only female trainee in a London firm of landscape architects. But she confounded expectations by lasting the course, and went on to rise to prominence as a teacher, writer and designer. For 11 years she was tenant of the National Trust’s Stoneacre in Kent, where she transformed the gardens. Since 2000 she has made a new garden in Hampshire.

Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd

Born in Rome, Arabella Lennox-Boyd spent seven years studying landscape architecture in London. In an international career spanning four decades, she has won six Chelsea Golds and created over 450 gardens, from sleek city rooftops to landscape parks and Italian palace gardens. “I’m in love with plants,” she declares. “And because I’m Italian, I’m in love with design, so I can only feel comfortable if the space is right.”

Jinny Blom

Following a first career as a psychotherapist, and a stint with Dan Pearson, self-taught Jinny Blom set up as a garden designer in 2000. Her best advice to women starting out? “Running a small business is hard work. Your family and friendships will suffer, your free time will evaporate and you will be, largely speaking, overstretched and underappreciated. But if you feel that’s the life for you, then go ahead.”

Penelope Hobhouse

At 38, Penelope Hobhouse was turned down by the landscape architecture course at Leeds, on the grounds that she was too old to make a meaningful career. Crestfallen, she went home and wrote a book – the first of many that were to provide inspiration to gardeners. In 1980 she took on the National Trust garden at Tintinhull in Somerset, which proved a stepping stone to a stellar international career in garden design.

Sarah Price

After struggling to make a living as an artist, Sarah Price retrained as a garden designer. Working on the Olympic Park, youth was more an issue than gender. “As a young woman designer, I was treated with a great deal more respect on the Olympic project than on many less high-profile jobs. It almost seems, the less professional the environment, the more prejudice you have to overcome.”

Arit Anderson

Garden designer and BBC TV presenter Arit Anderson started out in the world of fashion, but her career in garden design was kickstarted after she won the RHS Chelsea Fresh Talent Award in 2013. She studied at Capel Manor and set up Diamond Hill garden design, which focuses on London and the surrounding counties.

Ula Maria

Since she won the RHS Young Designer of the year in 2017, designer Ula Maria has not looked back, and she now has a gold medal  and an RHS Silver-gilt medal to add to her original accolade. Having grown up in rural Lithuania she has a particular connection with nature and emotive, sensory experiences in her gardens.

Brita von Schoenaich

In 1994, German-born Brita von Schoenaich introduced Britain to German naturalistic planting at a symposium at Kew. Von Schoenaich focuses on details in her gardens and she worked on Marks Hall Aboretum, creating a three-acre lakeside garden to complement and contrast with the wider estate. She studied at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew before taking a postgraduate course in landscape design and now works alongside Christopher Bradley-Hole.

Sarah Eberle

A trailblazer for women starting out on their careers, Sarah Eberle is one of this country’s most important garden designers and the most decorated designer at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. She looks to landscapes and architecture, rather than gardens, for ideas and often finds herself visiting scrap yards and quarries because both hold so much potential for creating something new. “I love brutal landscapes, such as deserts and volcanic areas, where nature shows such strength and personality.”

Juliet Sargeant

An initial career in the medical profession meant that Juliet Sargeant learnt quickly how important the natural world can be for healing. Juliet won a Gold Medal and the People’s Choice Prize for her 2016 Chelsea Flower Show garden, the Modern Slavery Garden, which was the show’s first ever social campaign garden. She is on the panel for show garden selection at Chelsea and was made a fellow of the Society of Garden Designers in 2017 for her contribution to garden design & horticulture.

Charlotte Harris

Charlotte Harris is returning to Chelsea this year with her working partner Hugo Bugg with a Horatio’s Garden, a wheelchair accessible garden for patients recovering from spinal injury. It will be relocated to Northern General Hospital in Sheffield to benefit its patients and staff. Charlotte’s work over the years has included several show gardens at Chelsea as well as the Clumber Park pleasure grounds and, with Hugo, she aims to create durable, sustainable landscapes. Watch our video on Charlotte Harris’s 100 favourite plants and read her article: There are brilliant women in gardening – why don’t we see more of them?

Isabel Bannerman

Along with her husband Julian, Isabel Bannerman has been designing gardens and gardens for over 30 years. Together they’ve won gold at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and their book Landscape of Dreams, documents the projects they have taken on – from unloved, unknown houses to projects from HRH the Prince of Wales at Highgrove, Paul Getty and Waddesdon Manor.

Jo Thompson

Ann-Marie Powell

Charlotte Rowe

Midori Shintani

The head gardener of Tokachi Millennium Forest, Midori Shintani maintains and manages the brainchild of entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi, a space that was created by Fumiako Takano in collaboration with Dan Pearson. “This garden is a bridge between humans and nature. We use minimum tools, minimum management, but maximum vision. We have a mission to introduce a new garden movement. The potential is exciting,” she said.

Andrea Cochran

The garden above, which overlooks the San Franciscan Bay, is a study in simple block planting and bold architectural design from Andrea Cochran, an American designer with over 30 years worth of experience creating private and public gardens. Her influences include Dan Kiley, Garrett Eckbo and James Rose and she works on everything to community housing projects to museum courtyard gardens.

Marie-Louise Agius

The designer began her career at Clifton Nurseries in London and has since worked on projects including an urban planning project in Northamptonshire and a large private estate  in Yorkshire. In 2013 she won a Gold Medal for the East Village Show Garden at the centenary of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Her great-grandfather created the gardens at Exbury, of which she is now a trustee.

The biggest mistake people make is thinking there can be no change,” says Deborah Evans of her work as a heritage and landscape consultant. “I’m old enough to remember the huge brouhaha that ensued when Christopher Lloyd ripped out the rose garden at Great Dixter. It set the cat among the pigeons, but as a horticulturist he knew it no longer worked.”

Although Deborah has a masters in the conservation of historic landscapes, it was two roles as head gardener for prestigious properties that gave her a particular and unusual understanding of the horticultural realities of working with historic gardens.

In 1998, she was appointed head gardener at the open-air museum at St Fagans, near Cardiff, where in addition to restoring the formal 19th-century gardens around St Fagans Castle, Deborah was in charge of recreating gardens for the ‘village’ of rescued and re-erected houses that give visitors an insight into different aspects and periods of Welsh history. “This ranged from the garden of a peasant’s house, which would have been thrown up overnight, just containing simple herbs and potatoes, to a rich yeoman’s garden with pigs, chickens and beehives, and sophisticated crops such as sea kale and salsify.” Within the gardens of a row of miners’ cottages, Deborah and her tem grew flowers, such as auriculas, that are typical of those grown by 19th-century florist societies.

Her team also grew heritage potatoes, including the cultivar ‘Lumper’, a particularly blight-susceptible variety that contributed to the Irish Famine, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs only permitted its inclusion as there were no commercial potato crops growing locally it could contaminate.

“These were just extraordinary things to grow,” says Deborah. “They also opened my eyes to the magic of plant breeding – and likewise when we grew old roses – where you can track generational improvements.” But she ripped out whole beds of ‘La France’, one of the great bedding roses of the 19th century. “It is just too disease prone. There is no point in growing it. Some old roses do very well, but often David Austin and Peter Beales just do it better.”

Deborah has no rose-tinted spectacles about the environmental standards of many historic gardens, an understanding that was brought home to her when in 2002 she was appointed as the first head gardener at Tyntesfield in Somerset after it was taken over by the National Trust. It was a massive task that involved managing 530 acres including woodlands and 11 acres of pleasure grounds with formal gardens, and a large derelict kitchen garden complex.

“We have this idea that the Victorian kitchen garden was wholesome and organic but in reality, it was anything but. It was a market garden, and they had to produce a lot so there was churn. They chucked chemicals around, happily trapped bullfinches because they ate fruit tree buds, and rolled peas in arsenic before they sowed them to stop the mice from getting them. By 2002, the ground at Tyntesfield was dead. It was completely worked out.” Alongside rejuvenating the derelict gardens and putting a robust programme of soil improvement into place, Deborah contributed to a groundbreaking multi-volume conservation plan that helped secure a £20 million grant from the National Lottery Community Fund.

After Tyntesfield, she became one of Historic England’s landscape architects before setting up her own consultancy. In addition to guiding owners through the planning system, much of her work involves helping them care for wildlife, and prepare for climate change. “I am often working with woodlands and succession tree planting within estate landscapes, and there are trees we daren’t use now, such as ash and horse chestnut. More climate-resilient species, such as holm oak and sweet chestnut, are the substitutes, so some of the subtleties of our designed landscapes will be changing over the next 50 to 70 years. It is going to be interesting to see how the Pacific North West conifers, which are such a feature of our Victorian and Edwardian gardens, cope as it gets hotter.”

This is indicative of the many skills Deborah enlists when dealing with historic landscapes. “I have as much interest in the architecture, ecology, and cultural context of a site as I do of the horticulture. My role is helping people to appreciate what they have, and making them aware of the responsibilities and potential of their landscapes. Gardens and landscapes, by their very nature, are dynamic, even historic ones. They are going to change whether we like it or not. I try to act as a critical friend, finding viable solutions to modern problems.”

USEFUL INFORMATION
Find out more about Deborah’s work at delh.co.uk. Deborah will be course leader on the Managing Wildlife in the Historic Environment course (5-8 June 2023) at West Dean College in West Sussex. Tel 01243 818232, westdean.org.uk.

Image note: Many thanks to Lytes Cary Manor in Somerset where this image was taken. For details on visiting this National Trust Property go to nationaltrust.org.uk

Having advertised the position for a new head gardener last August, the Garden Museum and trustees of Benton End have appointed James Horner to the role.

James will be taking on the position at the start of March, moving from Sussex to Suffolk to be the custodian of the gardens at Benton End.

James brings with him a wealth of experience, having been a gardener at Great Dixter under the mentorship of Fergus Garrett as well as collaborating with Luciano Giubbilei, travelling Europe and North America as a planting designer and consultant.

He has worked on a range of projects from public to private gardens across the UK and abroad, including the garden in Hastings Country Park of the artist Richard Smith. This ongoing project in particular has helped him to develop different colour palettes in borders, as Richard likes subtler tones and ‘off-colours’.

James has always been aware of the work of Cedric Morris, having had plants including some of the Benton End Irises. “I’ve always said if an amazing opportunity like this came along I would be interested in exploring it,” he told Matt Collins, head gardener at the Garden Museum.

“I’m super excited to be starting at the beginning of March,” he says “in some ways that’s the perfect time, in terms of seeing most of the bulbs that remain in the garden from Cedric’s time. The site is going to be a challenge, but we are very much at the beginning; everybody’s forming their own ideas about what this project is going to look like. It will take a huge amount of sensitivity, but I feel like there will be a lot of excitement.”

Keep an eye on the Benton End website for updates on the project.

Benton End is the former home of celebrated artist and plantsman Sir Cedric Morris and his partner, the artist Arthur Lett-Haines. It is now under the care of the Garden Museum and a board of trustees. The house is preparing to reopen as a place to learn about art and horticulture. While it remains closed to the public, preparations are underway to bring the house and gardens back to life for visitors.

People sometimes talk about having a passion for gardening, which generally means they like it a lot. But for true passion, few measure up to Keith Wiley. His garden, Wildside, on the fringes of Dartmoor, has been acclaimed as the most exciting and innovative in the UK. “We haven’t even begun to explore all of the possibilities for where gardening can go,” he declares, eyes glittering. “We’ve all done it in the same way, year after year, generation after generation.” At Wildside, however, he is determined to push the boundaries of an experimental ‘style’ of gardening – one inspired by close observation of nature, but with an understanding of form, a sense of narrative and a lyric intensity that lifts it on to an entirely different plane from more familiar forms of naturalist or otherwise gardening.

Over the past 14 years he has moved some 100,000 tonnes of rock and soil, three times over, to create the spectacular landscape that is Wildside – a labyrinth of serpentine paths and tree-clad hummocks, of ponds and canyons and shady groves – capturing the essence of a myriad habitats from damp Cornish valleys to the Temblor Mountains of California, from the flowering deserts of South Africa to the tumbledown barns of his Somerset childhood.

Keith describes that childhood as ‘feral’, roaming the countryside in search of birds’ nests, studying their habitats with a forensic exactness of observation. Most of us lose that ferocious power of concentration as we grow older, but Keith has retained it, noting the precise moment at which the movement of the sun gilds a curve of the land, or relishing the freckling of red in the shaggy bark of a pine. His father, too, was an ambitious garden-maker – always one for the grand gesture – but not so good at finishing a project, confides Keith. He has clearly inherited the bravura gene.

Following his training at Wye, in 1978 he was appointed head gardener for punctilious plantsman Lionel Fortescue at The Garden House. (The previous head gardener had quit, convinced, as were the garden’s trustees, that it was unviable.) Keith turned it around. By the 1990s, visitor numbers had soared from 200 a year to around 45,000, attracted by Keith’s bold new naturalistic plantings – glorious bulb and wildflower meadows, a cottage garden inspired by the landscapes of Crete, a mythic stone circle guarded by pink-stemmed birches, and above all a South African garden that spectacularly evoked the heat and dazzle of Namaqualand under the milky Devon skies.

After 25 years of unstinting commitment at The Garden House, Keith came unexpectedly to loggerheads with the trustees and quit. On his 50th birthday, Keith found himself jobless, homeless and penniless. “We didn’t have enough money to buy a house. We had just enough to buy a field, and hoped we would get planning permission for a nursery and eventually a house.” And thus, on a flat, south-facing, four-acre field, just down the lane from The Garden House, began Wildside, which he set about transforming with a superhuman energy.

“The potential here is just massive,” says Keith. So charged is he, I half expect him to shoot up into the stratosphere. “I go to bed every night dreaming about the next day. I suppose you could call it obsession.”

It is impossible to speak of Keith Wiley without mentioning his late wife, Ros. They met at Wye, and were inseparable until her death in 2019. Another woman might have been grumpy at waiting 14 years for her house to be built. She might have objected to the 80-hour weeks at The Garden House, and the years of unpaid toil, at the lack of time for her own art (Ros was an accomplished painter), or the dearth of creature comforts. Instead, she was always unflinching in her support. At one point, Keith took a few steps into the well-paid international lecture circuit, but he found it too lonely without Ros at his side, unwilling to explore new lands and lay down new memories unless he could share them with her. She couldn’t go with him; there were 40,000 plants to be tended.

Today, Keith manages the garden himself – the nursery is now closed – and is still afire with new projects. He and Ros had planned to slow down slightly and spend their semi-retirements painting – she in pigments, he in plants – but for the past three years Keith has thrown himself into creating the South African-style Ros Wiley Tribute Garden that reflects Ros’s love of colour with its vibrant red, orange and yellow flowers set among silver sub-shrubs. It will open to the public in spring 2023 and Keith has been deeply touched by the many generous donations that have made its creation possible.

Useful information
Wildside Garden, Green Lane, Buckland Monachorum, Devon PL20 7NP. Tel 01822 855755, wileyatwildside.com
The garden opens on selected dates from April to October. See website for details.

Joe Sharman suggests meeting at Monksilver, his nursery near Cambridge. It proves difficult to find, which I later discover is deliberate. The first two locals I ask have never heard of the nursery, the third advises: “Look out for a gap in the hedge.” Through the gap, up a track and in a circle of rough grass we sit in the sun on rickety white plastic chairs. Behind us a tall swathe of meadow grass and wild honeysuckle tumble through the hedge.

It is high summer, but Joe Sharman is talking snowdrops. “I established Monksilver Nursery in 1989,” he says. “But snowdrops were just a sideline while I concentrated on developing the rarer herbaceous plants. Then the herbaceous market went into decline and I decided to focus on snowdrops.”

The recent explosion of interest in snowdrops has been compared to the tulip mania that hit the Netherlands in the 17th century, when rare tulip bulbs cost more than a small house. The current vogue is partly down to Joe himself, who hit the headlines in 2015 when his Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Fleece’ was sold on eBay for £1,390.

Over the past 15 years he has been a major influence in expanding the snowdrop market and now every weekend from mid January to mid-March snowdrop gardens across the country open to the public. Like many plantsmen, his horticultural roots go back to his childhood. He often stayed with his grandmother and aunt who were very keen gardeners. “I was already gardening aged four, and still grow Kniphofia ‘Atlanta’, which was my favourite as a child.”

MORE ON GROWING SNOWDROPS

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Joe went to Writtle College in 1981. “It was the only practical horticultural course at the time. Afterwards I spent nine years as a journeyman, working in a nursery in California, then at Hillier, Bernhards in Rugby and Langthorns. My interest switched from trees and shrubs to herbaceous plants where the lead time is shorter.” Douglas Dawson, a professional gardener, and photographer Stephen Passler became his mentors. “They could see I was young and keen, and they were very generous, introducing me to all the important nurseries with interesting stock.”

When Joe established Monksilver Nursery he quickly built a reputation for propagating and supplying unusual plants. He claims to be the first nursery, in 1991, to hold plant sales that included other specialist growers, and established a format that has been copied widely by other nurseries, including Great Dixter.

But despite a successful mail-order business his high-value herbaceous plants were not making money – which is when snowdrops took over. Joe’s pivotal snowdrop moment came in 1986 with a phone call from his mother Esther who had spotted a yellow flower while she was walking on Wandlebury Ring near Cambridge. “Snowdrops are normally white and green, and the rare yellow ones were always weak. But this example was large and vigorous.”

Read our feature on yellow snowdrops.

Bill Clarke, Wandlebury’s warden, gave Joe a plant, kept one for himself and another went to Cambridge University Botanic Gardens. The rest were sold for £1,000, about £25 each, to a Dutch bulb company – and none survived.

When Joe’s bulb, named Galanthus plicatus ‘Wendy’s Gold’ after the warden’s wife, produced a small clump he put a photo in the RHS magazine The Garden and was overwhelmed with the response, which included an invitation to a very select snowdrop swapping club. “Around 20 galanthophiles had lunches during the season, led by Primrose Warburg, the formidable doyenne of snowdrops. I was only 27 and highly nervous of joining these very experienced gardeners.”

It was a small and intense world, but as Joe gained knowledge and developed a collection of snowdrops he felt they deserved a wider audience. In 1997 he started an annual Galanthus Gala that helped to kick start the market, and now every February galanthomania reaches fever pitch as specialist nurseries and private individuals chase sought-after specimens.

Joe is an astute businessman, spotting early on the potential of selling rare snowdrops on eBay. In 2011 his first yellow snowdrop, fetched a (then) record £747. Joe has subsquently broken records, selling a yellow snowdrop for £1,850 in 2022. He explains that the high prices reflect the time these new cultivars take to develop. “I was the first person to breed specific cultivars. I aimed to develop a yellow snowdrop but it takes over 18 years from the first seed to having enough stock to sell – so it’s lucky I started so young.”

He won’t predict how long the snowdrop craze will last but he’s turning his attention back to the main herbaceous nursery while focussing on the expanding snowdrop market in Europe. His unusual cultivars will always have customers, but plant theft is on the increase. With his rarer snowdrops valued at £500 a bulb, he guards them ruthlessly, even pulling off the heads so they can’t be identified. Monksilver Nursery may be hard to find, but his stock of valuable snowdrops – in another location – is even more carefully hidden.

Monksilver Nursery
Oakington Road
Cottenham
Cambridgeshire
CB24 8TW
Tel 01954 251555, www.monksilvernursery.co.uk

Earliest garden memory I remember my parents’ pretty basic attempt at growing vegetables. I think it only lasted a season, but at the age of seven or eight, I was fascinated to discover that we could grow our own food and particularly excited by the meagre crop of carrots.

Horticultural heroes Plantswoman Beth Chatto and head gardeners Fergus Garrett and Tom Coward are all huge inspirations to me. I admire Fergus and Tom for their passion and commitment to projects at a single location, something I’ve tried to emulate in my own career. And Beth’s mantra, ‘right plant, right place’, constantly resonates with me.

Favourite landscape and garden that has influenced you Stourhead, Gravetye Manor, Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, and Great Dixter all spring to mind. I have also spent time on the northwest coast of Ireland in Co Donegal. The empty beaches, endless sand dunes and huge array of wild flora on offer always blows me away, as does the wind.

Three worthwhile tips Don’t worry about things not working; trial and error is key to learning. Make lots of notes. I’m constantly jotting things down when I do things – what works, what doesn’t, and so on. And don’t always follow the rules; try different things – you might find that something works when you never expected it to.

Favourite ‘weed’ you’re happy to have in your garden I’m a huge fan of teasel: great structure, long season of interest and great for the birds in late autumn and winter.

Favourite planting style I do like prairie-style planting but equally love a shaded woodland understorey. Opening up long overgrown sections on the wider estate at Beaverbrook, where I used to work, led me to discover just how quickly plants that had been lost to an area can quickly re-establish given the right conditions.

In what direction do you see horticulture heading in the next few years? I’ve been lucky enough to work with a great cross-section of people during my career, but the wider world of horticulture is still very male dominated. I see a slow change in this, but feel that there should be more female head gardeners than there are at present.

Your gardening legacy The planting of 10,000-plus native, deciduous whips in the Surrey Hills. I know that I will never see them at their best, but knowing that in 80-100 years there could be swathes of woodland that I sourced and planted is a very satisfying legacy to be able to leave.

Email Ebeveridge1@gmail.com Instagram @dinder_gardener

Paolo Arrigo can’t sit still. A fourth-generation London Italian, he wears his multiculturalism on his sleeve, enthusing wildly about all his passions from slow food, endangered vegetables and biodiversity to foraging, cooking from scratch and accordion-playing. He talks quickly and with conviction, always in a hurry to stand up for what he believes in and to get things done. His company, Seeds of Italy, is a full-time job, but he also gives 50 talks a year to groups, sits on several volunteer committees, has just trained as a St John Ambulance operational events first aider and has even gone to the Ukrainian border three times over the past year to drive refugees to safety. When he cares, he acts.

For Paolo, gardening and food are indistinguishable. Seeds of Italy, which he started in 1999, imports and distributes the highly regarded Franchi seed brand from Bergamo in northern Italy, close to the Italian Alps. “I was helping out in my dad’s deli in London and I thought it would be cool to have a stand selling seeds. It made perfect sense to me. In an Italian market, tomatoes in all their forms are on sale alongside each other: fresh, bottled as sauce plus the seeds and plants to grow them – it’s all seen as food.”

Soon he had persuaded other delis and farm shops to take the seed too, and the business took off. Franchi is the oldest family run seed company in the world, established in 1783, and their principles chime with Paolo’s. “Franchi aren’t just suppliers, they are seed producers: they celebrate heritage, taste and regionality, and commission the seed to be grown just for them. Do you know, a staggering 94 per cent of the world’s heritage varieties have been lost over the past century? It matters! We need variety. Seed banks are great as insurance policies but really, the only way to preserve all these wonderful old varieties is to keep growing them.”

To bang this drum, Paolo created a Slow Food ‘Ark of Taste’ garden at the 2019 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, which won him not only a seventh RHS medal but also the title of Slow Food in the UK’s Person of the Year – a career highlight. “Slow Food is a huge worldwide food movement, founded in Italy [in 1989], that celebrates regional foods and highlights varieties at risk of being lost. Rather than rhinos and pandas two by two, we had endangered vegetables going on to the ark.”

There are stories behind many of the 500-plus varieties that Paolo sells in the UK, and he’s keen to tell them. “Far from corporate varieties, these are seeds with soul. ‘Viroflay’ spinach dates back to the 16th century and will give you four harvests a year. It’s wonderful but it would never be sold in food shops because you need to eat it as soon as you pick it. Our Neapolitan ‘San Marzano 2’ seeds originated on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and they will produce tomatoes that are far superior to any you can buy.” His family comes from Piedmont in northern Italy, so
he understands food crops for colder climates. “We’re great at spring sowing in Britain but the worst at sowing seasonally. Apart from December and January, you can grow vegetables here all year round. My philosophy is, if you pull something up, why not put something in?”

Brexit has been a thorn in Paolo’s side and he still rails against it, citing the increased bureaucracy and continuing uncertainty as massive challenges that have forced him to reduce his available range. In 2019 he launched a Brexit survival kit of 12 vegetable varieties, offering something to sow or harvest every month of the year. “It  started as a bit of a joke but actually, it was very well thought out.” This year he has responded to 2022’s low rainfall by highlighting both drought-resistant vegetable varieties and native British wildflowers. “We try to be very hands on and we love people to call us. Seeds are such a precious commodity and I want people to understand that.”

Helping customers to grow more and grow better is Paolo’s quest. Food has always been at the centre of his family life and the how-to book he wrote, From Seed To Plate (Simon & Schuster, 2010), honours that tradition. He and his wife Alex, also of Italian heritage, are bringing up their children in the same way: son Vincenzo, 18, and daughter Amelia, 14, have learned to forage fungi, just as Paolo did with his own father. He recounts how, as a teenager, he once played truant and went off into the woods for the day. Coming across two perfect porcini mushrooms presented him with a dilemma, but knowing they were too good to waste, he took them home. “I got a hiding for missing school, but we did have a wonderful porcini risotto that night and secretly, I think my dad was rather proud of me!”

USEFUL INFORMATION
Find out more about Seeds of Italy at seedsofitaly.com

Gardening is an ever-changing process, so often we decide to do new things, or change the way we work on a regular basis. But the new year, when there’s time to reflect on the previous year, and the pace of work in the garden eases off, is a great opportunity to think carefully about what to do next.

We asked some of our contributors and people we’ve featured and worked with over the last year, what their new year gardening resolutions are.

Here’s what they said.

Tayshan Hayden Smith

Presenter, activist, and gardener founder of Grow2Know

I don’t usually subscribe to New Year’s resolutions, but in 2023 I intend to continue to grow, develop and drive the positive trajectory of Grow2Know. The impact of our work has reached far and wide, changing lives in some cases. 2023 needs to be a year of change and we’re here to ensure, implement and steer that change. I’m feeling motivated, energised and (maybe naively) optimistic.

grow2know.org.uk/

Alice Vincent

Author, gardener and Gardens Illustrated columnist

My 2023 resolution in the garden is to be there a bit more. It’s been such a busy year and I’ve enjoyed stepping back from the garden but it’s been pretty low effort in terms of what I put in. We are hopefully going to be landscaping and making some changes, which I’m excited about, and after a few rookie years of experimenting, I’m looking forward to taking a more considered approach – to not only what I grow, but also how I garden. So I think it’s going to be a big one. No pressure! But I am looking forward to enjoying the garden more, rather than seeing it as something to do.

Read Alice’s columns here 

@noughticulture

Danny Clarke

Garden designer and presenter, aka The Black Gardener

I think trees are wonderful and I love to give them a big hug whenever the opportunity arises. Apart from sheltering us from the wind, rain and sun they provide us humans with oxygen, meaning we couldn’t survive without them.

Trees are at the forefront of our battle against global warming because they drag carbon down from the atmosphere, locking it back into the soil. I can’t get enough of these fabulous giant plants and my first New Year’s resolution for 2023 is to plant even more of them!

My second New Year resolution for 2023 is to introduce as many house plants into my home that’s possible. Makes complete sense to link the inside of the property and outdoors by having some wonderful eye candy for me to get up close and personal with. Let’s face it, they are brilliant at relieving stress, helping concentration and improving air quality. What is there not to like about them.

theblackgardener.co.uk/

Jack Wallington

Landscape designer and writer

I’m so excited about 2023 because it’s the third year in our new garden in Yorkshire and all of the plants I’ve been growing on from seed, spore or plug plant are now large enough to spread around, alongside a selection of new small trees and large shrubs. It’s a pivotal year where our new garden will start to show its visual impact thanks to the power of plants. We’re early in our 5-10 year project for climate, wildlife and us; some would require patience to grow like this but the joy for me is in the process.

Veronica Peerless

Gardens Illustrated commissioning content editor

Like many people, I’m thinking about water in my garden – how I can use less of it, and how I can save rainwater in an attractive way. I’ve already got a water butt, but need to do more. I’ve noticed that loads of water drips off the roof of my little greenhouse when it rains, so I’ve put a large galvanised water trough (a birthday present) next to it to capture the run off. In the spring, I’m going to plant a small water lily in it, and I’ll use it as a ‘dipping tank’.

Jason Williams, the Cloud Gardener

Gardener and social media influencer 

For better results, next year I am going to focus on what my garden can grow as opposed to growing what I want to grow.

@cloudgardenerUK

Sorrel Everton

Gardens Illustrated deputy editor

Generally I don’t make resolutions, preferring to keep my challenges on a rolling basis, as and when they need addressing – more of an ongoing to-do list. So, here’s a few items that are currently at the top of my list for 2023.

Staking my plants more effectively. I might even treat myself to attending a natural supports workshop to make sure I actually do get this job done. I don’t mind an element of plant flopping but this year’s drought, followed by a long, mild autumn meant things just kept on growing, resulting in some fairly extreme leanings.

Another is to make much more effective use of mulching – home composted as far as possible rather than buying in. Everything I read about mulching just makes sense as our climate becomes more variable.

And finally, along with many others, I will be deciding on the best choice to replace the box moth-devastated box balls we removed earlier in the year. It could be an opportunity to do something completely different, or do I look to Matt Pottage’s ideas in our recent feature on possible evergreen, clippable alternatives? Here’s to meeting 2023’s ongoing garden challenges.

Molly Blair

Gardens Illustrated editorial assistant

To do more with less. I’m going to have fewer pots and fewer plants and try to make those work harder for me so there is less work and watering to do.

Jason Ingram

Garden photographer

I spend most of my working year in the most incredible gardens, both large and small, but 2023 will see our home garden being designed, landscaped and planted. I pick up so many shoot spoils and plants from the wonderful people I visit through my work but often these go into the garden without any real consideration. We moved just over a year ago so we have done the right thing and watched the light throughout the seasons to know where things will be best placed so we feel confident we can now actually move on with putting our plans into action. So outside of shooting all the beautiful gardens I have planned for 2023 , I will be getting my hands dirty in my own garden.

www.jasoningram.co.uk/

Stephanie Mahon

Gardens Illustrated editor

Having let my garden do whatever it wanted and go completely wild for the past two years, this year I shall be checking what has done extremely well (i.e taken over) due to my benign neglect, and what has suffered, died off or been crowded out – to make room for more plants, of course. I am determined to be realistic for once about what will actually grow in my steeply sloping, north-facing, winter-wet, summer-baked Welsh valley garden… that is, until I visit my first plant fair or nursery, when such a sensible resolution will probably go straight out the window, as usual. I am very much looking forward to trying out my new garden shredder, and, as I barely ever mow it anymore anyway, I am toying with the idea of finally getting rid of my lawn in 2023. Which would give me lots of room for more plants.

Humaira Ikram

Landscape and horticultural designer

1. Support more gardens and nurseries and find new and exciting plants (usually only new to me) to use in my schemes!
2. Read all of the books that I have bought all year including: Nature is a Human Right, Eco Gardening, The Mother Tree (someone told me to get this on audio book!) and start a gardening bookclub (so that I actually read all of the books) on thehub.earth.
3. Write a book… (this might be hard as I don’t know what to write about yet but Im working on it).
4. Thinking bigger than just my own projects and gardens and how to create better gardens that fit seamlessly into their surroundings and the world.
5. Create an environment where people want to learn and can ask questions! It is always fine to do this!
6. Manifest more exciting design projects and clients to work with. Focus Humaira, FOCUS!
7. Be grateful for all I have and for what I do. Savour every minute.
8. If all of that fails (and even if it doesn’t), do an art foundation, wear dungarees and make/paint/create things and always have fun! (This might not happen this year but at some point, I will do this.)

studioikram.com/

Daisy Bowie-Sell

Gardens Illustrated digital editor

My focus on 2023 is going to be all about the three Cs. Compost, compost, compost. While I have set up a compost heap in the garden, I haven’t been very good at feeding it. Just dumping the odd bit of grass and leaf cuttings when I’m out there. With everyone – including Alice Vincent on these pages and Jane Owen in the Financial Times – talking about the deep joys of composting, my resolution is to properly mulch down my kitchen waste, and carefully layer my heap with cardboard and whatever else I need to. That cyclical process – recycling, reusing etc – is good for so many things and if I can manage to get it happening in my own garden, then everyone’s a winner.

George Cullis 

Landscape architect

When we moved into our house a few years ago, I designed a dry garden mixing topsoil into and over crushed site rubble that was left over from building works. Selecting plants that thrive in these poor conditions, the garden is now well established. My children love the biodiversity of the garden, watching birds over their breakfast and collecting creepy crawlies. I would love them to grow up with an appreciation of nature and of how we must value and respect our environment. In order to get the most out of our relatively modest garden this year my new year’s resolution is to introduce more edibles into the gaps between planting. The wonder of planting a seed that eventually produces something you can eat transcends age!

studiocullis.com/

Here’s the people who made an impact in 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect back on the year we’ve had. We asked director of the Garden Museum, Christopher Woodward, for the top ten people who he felt made an impact in 2022. From philanthropic organisations through to designers and gardeners, here’s his list.

Ten people who made an impact in 2022

Project Giving Back

Yes, we’re starting with an organisation, rather than a person, but eighteen gardens sponsored at the Chelsea Flower Show, each for a good cause: you have to blink at the generosity of Project Giving Back, set up by anonymous philanthropists to revive a post-Covid Main Avenue.  Project Giving Back also supports charities including the RNLI and St Mungo’s by each installation metamorphosing into a permanent new garden after the Show. The best connection between gardens and good causes since the National Gardens Scheme was founded in 1927.

www.givingback.org.uk

Koos and Karen Bekker of The Newt

The Newt in Somerset opened in 2019. It’s an epic and conscientiousness investment in gardens on an old country estate by a couple with an interest in garden history and design, from the productive formality of architect and landscape designer Patrice Taravella to the restoration of the garden of a ruined Roman villa by Urquhart & Hunt (winners of Best in Show at the Flower Show). In 2022 The Newt became the official sponsor of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – and the gala night got a lot cooler, with an Ibiza deck upstairs.

thenewtinsomerset.com/

Charlie Hawkes

Landscape designer

Perhaps the coolest and most confident of the Project Giving Back gardens at Chelsea Flower Show this year was a deep green square in the marquee by Charlie Hawkes for Wilderness UK. The lapping green leaves are an echo of the plantings of Dan Pearson’s Millennium Forest in Hokkaido, where Hawkes spent a transformative year gardening.

www.charliehawkes.co.uk/

Alexandra Noble

Garden and landscape designer

If you want to be surprised, ask Alexandra Noble what she is up to; last time I called her she was at Paris Fashion Week, installing a forested catwalk. Noble first studied as an architect and has a particular nerve for taking on difficult urban sites. Romantic, with a hard edge.

www.alexandranoble.com/

Charlotte Harris

Landscape designer

Harris’s partnership with Hugo Bugg is one of the most interesting in gardens, with a confidence to pick and choose provocative and worthwhile projects, from 1930s housing estates in London to Scottish islands. Their 2021 Chelsea garden was notable for the pipework sculpture by architects Mcmullan Studio. Harris is becoming a voice pushing the profession to try harder, while her must-have one hundred plants for Gardens Illustrated in January 2022 perked up many of us for the year ahead.

www.harrisbugg.com/

Poppy Okocha

Ecological food grower

Okocha began to study horticulture in 2016 to root in her interests in foraging, food and permaculture. During the pandemic she became the gardener young urbanites were looking for: sincere, unpretentious, and infectious with her skill. The gardener most likely to be on stage at festival the Secret Garden Party.

www.poppyokotcha.com/

Katy Merrington

Cultural gardener

hepworthwakefield.org/our-story/garden/diary-of-a-cultural-gardener/

John Little

Founder of the Grass Roof Co

Little has been quietly doing his thing since 1998 when he founded the Grass Roof Company as a second career, experimenting with plants that grow in poor soil or in cracks in city streets. In recent years his self-built house in Essex has become the go-to place for aspiring brownfield gardeners. And he’s one of the nicest guys in gardens.

www.grassroofcompany.co.uk/

James Horner

Gardener and designer

www.jameshornergardens.com/

Ras Prince

Horticulturist

A personal choice: my most inspiring encounter this year was with Ras Prince, whose made a garden beside a football pitch in Lewisham, clearing half an acre of knotweed. But it’s not just another good-hearted community project: Prince is a real experimenter with growing and nurtures plants from Jamaica, where he was born, in a polytunnel heady with paraffin, and plants these beside old pears and roses. A former teacher, this is a life in plants.

Wondering what were the biggest news stories of 2022?